Sniper’s attempts to control voices led to shootings

SATELLITES listened to his thoughts, so he avoided the living room skylight.

The television spoke directly to him a DIY store commercial mocked struggles he'd had building a deck with his brother-in-law.

Then the voices in Charles McCoy Jr's head berated him as a "wimp" and a "wuss" who wouldn't stand up for himself, a psychiatrist testified in McCoy's trial for a series of Columbus-area highway shootings.

Then McCoy had a sensation he'd be relieved of the voices if he dropped deck-building materials off freeway overpasses, Dr Mark Mills said.

When he did, and later when he started shooting, the voices would decrease for a day or even a week.

Knowing right from wrong was remote from his mind, said the chief witness in McCoy's insanity defence.

That's the crux of the case, and a prosecution psychiatrist concluded McCoy did understand that the shootings were wrong.

McCoy's attorneys concede he was behind 12 shootings on and around Columbus-area highways in 2003 and 2004.

They must prove, under his plea of innocent by reason of insanity, his illness kept him from understanding the shootings were wrong.

"He was desperate to control his voices, those humiliating, humbling, hounding voices," Mills said.

"If someone came up to him and asked him, 'Charles, is it wrong to kill?' I don't think he would have been able to focus on that and deal with that."

McCoy was convinced his parents and police could read his thoughts and knew what he was doing. Because no one tried to stop him, Mills said, "He would have thought, in his psychotic and disordered way, that was affirmation that what he was doing was okay."

Prosecutors say McCoy planned his actions and showed rational thought by changing his shooting locations as publicity increased, and fleeing when his parents gave police his guns.

Mills, a psychiatrist who specialises in legal aspects of mental illness, said McCoy has a severe case of paranoid schizophrenia but refused his medicine because it had bad side effects one caused body aches, another diarrhoea and he said it interfered with his mind-reading ability.

McCoy has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to aggravated murder and 23 other counts.

He could face the death penalty if convicted of the most serious charge of aggravated murder in the death of a 62-year-old woman, who was the only person struck in the shootings.

Defence lawyers are not allowed to tell jurors that McCoy would be sent to a mental hospital if found insane.